Magazine serving the bus and rail transit & motorcoach operations since 1904
Issue link: https://metromag.epubxp.com/i/91140
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS 2012 Alliance and several initiatives funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The BlueGreen Alliance, formerly the Apollo Alliance, a national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy, was particularly vis- ible during the debate to enact the cur- rent transportation authorization bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). It lobbied ex- tensively for tighter Buy America poli- cies and enforcement as well, including the Brown-Merkely Amendments that make waiver provisions more difficult to obtain. These provisions are part of the organization's Transportation Man- ufacturing Action Plan it released in 2010, which called for a comprehensive strategy to boost federal investment to $30 billion per year for public transit and $10 billion per year for intercity and high-speed rail. According to the Alliance, the proposed $40 billion an- nual investments would create 3.7 mil- lion direct and indirect jobs — 600,000 alone in the manufacturing sector over the next six years, the likely duration of a reauthorized transportation bill. Sim- ilar to recommendations made by the Obama Administration in the Ameri- can Jobs Act in late 2011, such recom- mendations have gone nowhere in a tough election-year political climate. Meanwhile, the Rockefeller Founda- tion has been actively engaged in target- ed funding of nonprofit research groups that are interested in encouraging bus rapid transit (BRT), not only in the U.S. but through the New York-based Inter- national Transport Development Pro- gram, Embarq, and other groups that study and provide technical assistance to cities in the developing world that are interested in bus rapid transit. Another Rockefeller-funded project is led by Duke University's Center on Globalization, Governance & Compet- itiveness. In March 2012, a high-level meeting of policy analysts, industry executives and other stakeholders was convened to "build a BRT business 6 < mETRO mAGAZINE FACT BOOK 2013 A variety of interest groups have argued for a "green jobs" initiative borne out of the recent Great Recession as well as concerns about sustainability. constituency" in the U.S. The group recommended that steps could be taken to foster growth in the industry, but stopped short of major changes to public transport policies other than to increase funding and research toward ways to encourage private investment in the sector. FEDERAL SUPPORT NOT NEW Federal support for green jobs and technologies related to public transpor- tation's supply chain is nothing new, of course. In fact, a slew of federal policies, programs and incentives have been put into place to encourage, even mandate, development of such public-transport- related technologies as clean fuels and vehicle technologies. For example, since at least 1988 the Departments of En- ergy and Transportation as well as the Environmental Protection Agency have been involved, along with state and local transit agencies, in research- ing, developing, deploying, and testing the environmental and safety aspects of alternatively fueled buses in urban set- tings. The American Recovery and Rein- vestment Act of 2009 (also known as "the stimulus bill") significantly in- creased federal funding for clean transit projects around the country, including many of those described earlier. One of the key programs initiated under ARRA — but continued a few years beyond ARRA — is the Transit Invest- ments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction (TIGGER) Program, which works directly with and provides grants to public transportation agencies to implement new strategies for reduc- ing greenhouse gas emissions and/or reduce energy use within transit opera- tions. The TIGGER program distributed more than $360 million in grants, but it was not renewed in the fiscal 2012 budget deal or included in the new MAP-21 legislation. Other federal efforts in recent years have included the Fuel Cell Bus Pro- gram, in which the FTA provides grants to promote hydrogen fuel cell buses, as well as the FTA's Electric Drive Strategic Plan to guide federal research efforts on bus electric propulsion technology. The new MAP-21 legislation does in- clude a "deployment" program focused on low- and zero-emission public trans- portation vehicles, providing grants for acquiring such vehicles (and related equipment), constructing facilities for such vehicles and rehabilitating exist- ing facilities to accommodate the use of such vehicles. It remains to be seen whether the program will emulate TIG- GER or similar programs of recent years. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF These efforts follow on some previ- ous high-profile efforts to encourage the American public transportation metro-magazine.com